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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22850950">I Fiori Del Male</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/casstayinmyass/pseuds/casstayinmyass'>casstayinmyass</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The New Pope (TV), The Young Pope (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Body Worship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Smut, Kissing, Older Man/Younger Woman, Poetry, Priest Kink, Priests, Religious Guilt, Romance, Secret Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:54:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,692</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22850950</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/casstayinmyass/pseuds/casstayinmyass</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Scandal is trivial when it comes to Catholic factions, as long as it’s well hidden. You, a nude model, and the High Priest of England are forced to put that to the test during one last night of passion, when Papacy looms.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>John Brannox | John Paul III x Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I Fiori Del Male</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Your robe trails behind you along the marble floors of the manor. It’s the middle of the night, and you knew he’d be waiting for you when you arrived on the grounds.  </p><p>“You’re early,” John says, smiling. You shut the door quietly, walking over to the bed and discarding your robe. The older man is sitting, contented, by his fireplace, harp resting comfortably in his lap.</p><p>“I got here just when I intended to,” you reply, and he pauses his playing of the harp to admire your body. He turns back to face the far wall.</p><p>“You’ve heard the news, I take it.”</p><p>You take a breath. You hadn’t expected him to bring that up before joining you in bed… it took a toll on the expected activities of the night. “Yes. I’ve heard.” He plucks a couple of the strings on the harp, and you realize you’ve closed the conversation too early. “When do you leave?”</p><p>“Tomorrow.” That, you weren’t expecting. John glances over, eyebrows raising a little at your reaction. “You’re upset.”</p><p>“I’m surprised,” you correct, though you can’t ignore the tugging feeling you have in your stomach. John stands, abandoning his instrument, and walks leisurely over to the bed in his purple velvet dressing gown. A small smile appears on his lips.</p><p>“You’re upset.” Before you can search your brain for any excuse or assurance that you were, in fact, unaffected, he puts his hands on your shoulders. “I’m upset as well.”</p><p>“You agreed,” you whisper.</p><p>“After difficult deliberation.”</p><p>“It mustn’t have been all too difficult. Will you take all your books and antiques? Music, cultured possessions, what you need to teach Rome?”</p><p>“I’ll take what I can.”</p><p>“What about what you can’t?”</p><p>“The Papacy is an <em>honor</em>.”</p><p>“You’re a high priest.”</p><p>“Pope is a tad higher, my dear. An honor which should have been bestowed upon my brother. Or according to my dear parents, that is.”</p><p>“So, what?” you ask, blinking demurely up at him through your eyelashes, “You want to prove you can be a better Pope than Adam could have been?” Any other man with John’s history would have lashed out at that. But your lover was a gentle, kind man—commanded loyalty and obedience, no doubt, but he did so with benevolence.</p><p>“I do not know what sort of Pope Adam would have been, since Adam is dead. A living Pope is superior to a dead one, so right from the start, I… have a slight advantage.” His tone is contemplative, empty of any implied sarcasm. You sit up on your knees, and place your right hand on top of his, where it’s still resting on your shoulder. You then begin to kiss up his arm, until you can no longer bunch his dressing gown sleeve any higher.</p><p>“Take this off?” you ask, eyes hooded.</p><p>“Already there, are we?” he murmurs, taking your hand and squeezing it. “I thought there’d be more of an argument.”</p><p>“Passion, good or bad, shows its colors in the throes of pleasure,” you respond, and move your hands in, feeling his chest and shrugging the robe off for him. He removes his underclothes with precision, eyes never leaving your naked body.</p><p>“You’re like a sculpture, my dear (y/n),” he says, leaning in to brush his lips across your cheek.</p><p>“You can’t touch sculptures,” you breathe, crawling backward on the bed. He joins you, eyes descending to your spreading legs.</p><p>“I can do as I please. I’ll be the Pope this time next week.”</p><p>You grin, and he kisses you properly, lips always the perfect feeling against yours. The pleasant familiarity of his beard scratching your chin almost helps you forget that it may be the last time you’d feel it.</p><p>“A work of art,” he continues, “I stare at the painting of you we’ve got in our west wing drawing room. If I wasn’t leaving so abruptly, I’d have half a mind to have it moved to my study.”</p><p>“Why don’t you move it to your chapel?”</p><p>“What an intriguing idea.”</p><p>“People would certainly talk.”</p><p>“People do talk. It doesn’t mean we have to listen.”</p><p>You giggle, wrapping your legs around him and dragging your foot up his back. “You’re no Pope, John Brannox.”</p><p>“On the contrary. I believe I can restore sanity to the Vatican, if nothing else.” You hum, and he feels a hand down your chest, cupping your breast as he makes sure you’re wet and ready for him.</p><p>“I remember the day I was painted on that couch,” you say. “I do so many, it’s hard to recall most, but that one I remember. It had been commissioned by your estate. It was to go to the High Priest of England, Sir John Brannox, the painter told me.”</p><p>“And did that affect your position, my dear?” he smirks, touching your clit. You gasp, rolling your hips up to his hand.</p><p>“Yes. I posed as I do in my others, but my eyes… they bore the seduction. I imagined what you would do with the art. Perhaps, your reaction to it.”</p><p>“My reaction to it was most underwhelming, I must disappoint you,” he smiles, “I couldn’t very well show how taken with it I was.”</p><p>“But did you think of me that night?” you moan.</p><p>“Every night since,” he replies. “I was enchanted. I still am.”</p><p>“And I am enamored with you,” you tell him, pressing your lips to his again. “When you arranged that meeting with me, I believed you would be the same as every important man in this country.”</p><p>“I am not?” he asks.</p><p>“You know you’re not. You’re not arrogant. You flaunt, but you do so tastefully. That, I can forgive.”</p><p>“If your goal was to flatter me into proper form, it’s done the trick,” he laughs fondly, and you look down to see him hard. You place his hands on your breasts again.</p><p>“Soon, that painting will be your only reminder of me. Touch me while you can. Commit my body to memory for lonely nights, and I will do the same.”</p><p>He does as you say, burying himself inside you with a laboured intake of breath. You hold onto him as he builds up a perfect pace, each thrust deep and satisfying. He listens to your body, knows without a word from you when he needs to try something new.</p><p>“Will you find another lover as versatile as I am?” he teases, new vigor restored to his expression as he takes his younger companion. You roll your eyes. No man is immune to praise, especially that of the sexual nature and during the act.</p><p>“Your talents will remain unmatched, I’m sure,” you huff, and he thrusts in hard, grunting softly.</p><p>“Are you certain you won’t find some… younger man, who will bring you to your climax faster?”</p><p>“I will never fuck a man who does not appreciate the art of slowly taking a woman apart like you do,” you tell him.</p><p>“That’s reassuring,” he says, “These new romantics these days have studied up on their poetry, I’m sure, and I’m glad for it.”</p><p>You breath his name as his thrusts get faster, then recall a line of poetry out of Rome that you’ve always meant to write down somewhere. “Che mistero è questo, che posso sentire le mie labbra sulla punta delle dita.” <em>(What mystery is this, that I can feel my lips in your fingertips.)</em></p><p>He gasps, hips moving quickly as he responds in broken Italian. “E quando mi ha guardato, avevo dimenticato quale fosse la sofferenza, ma sono morto mille morti.” <em>(And when she looked at me, I had forgotten what suffering was, but died a thousand deaths.)</em></p><p>“I want you to take me harder than you’ve taken anyone,” you whisper in his ear, lips falling further open and legs spreading even wider for him, “I won’t break.”</p><p>He takes this seriously, reaching every part of your body and going harder than you’ve seen him ever before. It’s magnificent, but he’s starting to get tired, you can tell by the way his forearms are beginning to quiver.</p><p>“I’m very close,” the older man whispers in your ear, stroking your hair back, “Are you?” You arch your back, your fevered moans reaching their desperate crescendo in an answer to his question.</p><p>“Come when you need to,” you tell him softly, “I don’t mind.” But he’s not about to leave you. A few more thrusts, and you both finish together.</p><p>John breathes heavily beside you, lowering himself down and pulling out of you. You watch him as he gets up, and walks over to his mirror, sitting down in front of it to wipe at some of the dark eyeliner he had forgotten to remove before nighttime. You stretch out across his four poster bed, golden sheets satin against your skin.</p><p>“Do you love me, John?”</p><p>There was a steady pause, more silence following still.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>The answer sounded careless, but you knew him to be a careful man. You meet his eyes in the mirror. “Then take me with you.”</p><p>He merely looks back at you, a sort of softness in his eyes. It’s nothing like condescension, the knowing male gaze that tells you that you simply wouldn’t understand. His eyes carry the weight of knowing that you know, and knowing what that means for him.</p><p>A night spent together with an unmarried young woman carries more gravity when it is done wearing the Cloth. As a High Priest, it can be explained away to God as a simple sin, a carnal desire passed off and forgotten in a confessional, but under Papacy? Such a thing is not so easily forgiven.</p><p>“Everything evil in this world is hysteria of love,” he says. “Distortions of our ability to love. It’s a beautiful thing, but it’s just beyond my grasp. And my hopes are, you can share it with another. Please, for both of our sakes, my dear… mistake my love, one last time, for tenderness. For that is what I can offer you, and <em>all</em> that I can offer you.”</p><p>From that moment, you knew. He was the New Pope.</p>
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